From January 26-28, Hans and I were invited to a workshop in Lisbon on "Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate". The workshop was organized by Jerry Ravetz and Angela Pereira, and the intention or rationale of the workshop can be read here. Among others, Judith Curry was there and already posted on her blog great observations, insights and comments (for part 1 have a look here;). No one is a better blogger than her, and I will only add here some random observations and afterthoughts. On a post-workshop stroll through Lisbon, I ran across this sign on a door in the Alfama. In English, it says 'no man's land - anarchist space', and in a certain way it reminded me of the open atmosphere of the workshop, which represented many climate tribes connected only through their effort to find out more about the current state of climate affairs. At least on this workshop, climate change indeed belonged to no one, neither the skeptics nor the alarmists.

The Guardian reports about an interesting development within the UN leadership. UN general secretary Ban Ki-Moon no longer thinks an international agreement is realistic in the coming years. The new focus is paying more attention to national 'realities on the ground', and also giving higher priority to sustainable development. I think this is a positive sign.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Peter Sissons, a former BBC newsreader, has written his memoirs. These have been serialized in the The Daily Mail. It is obvious that Sissons was at loggerheads with the culture and policy of the BBC, including a reporting style he dismisses as 'politically correct'. What caught my attention is his comment on the BBC's reporting on climate change.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Within the Dutch climate debate chemist and scientific journalist Marcel Crok has the reputation of critical follower of the developments. He gained some international fame with his 2005 NWT article on the hockeystick affaire. Michael Mann’s method was criticised by McIntyre and McKitrick and by von Storch and Zorita. Crok explained in clear words how the affair developed and how this later symbol of the IPCC report should be valued. There exists a German translation of his still interesting article.

Last November Marcel Crok published a book “Staat van het klimaat”, on which he has worked a long time. The book was appraised, but critical notes were made too at the same time. The book is written in Dutch.

Monday, January 24, 2011

The naughties are now over. We have already read that NASA has officially declared the year 2010 as the warmest in the observational record, but are these temperature measurements telling us something?

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Someone said that reading the daily newspaper is our modern form of morning prayer. Here you see the frontpage of a German daily, the FAZ, January 5th. Under the heading "Unimaginable dimensions", it displays a photo of a poisonous snake seeking shelter from high water in Rockhampton, Australia. The caption says that according to the myths of the Aborigines, snakes are animals that bring rain. But the majority in Australia are Christians who believe in the bible, and there the snakes are the devil's messengers. Quoting (ironically?) a proverb, the caption goes on saying that everything poisonous and evil lives in Australia, before it gives a hint to the articles inside the newspaper about the flooding in Rockhampton.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Watch it here on youtube: this an interesting take on the climate debate from the perspective of youth culture. It's a both funny and disillusioned contribution from the rap-news channel: Lord Monckton rap battles Al Gore, leaving the moderator angry at those talking heads, demanding solidarity with those truly concerned. (thanks to JJJ for the link!)

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Büntgen et al. have published a paper in Science
(10.1126/science.1197175) which correlates the climate of the past 2500 years to social and political events. The data is based on various sources, mainly tree ring data but also eye witness reports.

Friday, January 14, 2011

In the last week, we had asked what the participants think about the publication of short analyses by readers on the Klimazwiebel. We got 22 responses, of which 6 voted an "unconditional yes", 3 opted for an editing concerning readability, 12 a prior review concerning quality, and 1 voted against.

I conclude that such contributions are (conditionally) welcome, but that same caution should be exercised concerning quality, including readability, logic. Thus, if someone wants to publish a short piece, please contact one of the editors. Presently, we have one in the queue, which publication has to wait for me retrun from Japan, where I suffer certain limitations in access of web-resources.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

It escaped my attention that Julian Assange claimed the climategate emails for his Wikileaks enterprise. There is a video up on youtube which you can watch here. What is going on? Why does he claim this scoop? As has been pointed out, climategate makes its first appearance in Wikileaks only days after the mails had been uploaded on a Russian server. Watching some other videos on the playlist offered by Youtube suggests an answer: because Assange has become victim of his own success, he believes in the myth he has created and others have repeated, that it is only Wikileaks that can do this kind of thing.

Roger Pielke Jr has an interesting post up on his blog. He was part of a small research project analysing reports about sea level rise in the media, in IPCC reports, and in scientific papers. The upshot is that the media by and large report consistent with the scientific assessments. Read the article here.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

There are growing efforts for studying climate scientists and their attitude, opinions and activities. These analyses are often based upon interviews, which are not meant for publication in a newspaper or other media, but merely as material for a, possibly comparative, analysis. I have now been subject to several requests to answer pre-formulated questions, and I publish the latest one in the following.

I welcome this tendency of looking closer at the actors on the climate change stage, who often like to present (and honestly consider) themselves as being objective and driven by entirely rationale and irrefutable motives.

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.